Upon coming to Mason, I knew I wanted to get involved in
linguistics, and specifically, research. I have always found human language to
be a fascinating subject, especially the capabilities we are born with versus
what we acquire. After trying to get involved in linguistics at Mason, I was
able to meet with a professor.
Finally, I was put into contact with Dr. Culbertson. I
became interested in the project after meeting Dr. Culbertson of the
Linguistics Program at Mason. I was fortunate to be able to work with Dr.
Culbertson this past spring as an assistant in the linguistics lab. After
helping her with the second language acquisition experiment, we found
interesting results. This became the branching point for our next experiment. We
wanted to know why students here at Mason could not learn the artificial
language task. From there, we narrowed our question down to motivation, anxiety,
and training time factors as possible contributors.
For my project, I run participants on the computer task
on a weekly basis. Most of the work involves organization with participants and
recording data properly. I hope learning about factors in second language
acquisition can further my connections with teaching and examining learning
styles of children. My long term goal is to continue working in the field of
linguistics and create connections that benefit education in the classroom.
A
recent discovery with the project has been through the participants. I have
noticed that participants are eager to learn the language task and want to know
what the language program involved. I am happy to explain the project and here
the thoughts of the participants. Knowing that these findings about language
acquisition can benefit them and other students allows me to pursue my interest
with language research.
